The United States Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General ("OIG") recently issued Advisory Opinion 09-05 (the "Advisory Opinion"), which analyzes a hospital's proposal to compensate physicians for on-call services provided to the hospital's uninsured emergency department patients (the "On-Call Arrangement") under the federal anti-kickback statute (the "Antikickback Law").

The OIG released an Open Letter to Health Care Providers that refines the Self-Disclosure Protocol ("SDP"). To more effectively fulfill our mission and allocate our resources, we are narrowing the SDP’s scope regarding the physician self-referral law. OIG will no longer accept disclosure of a matter that involves only liability under the physician self-referral law in the absence of a colorable anti-kickback statute violation.

WASHINGTON – Lester E. Cox Medical Centers, a health care system headquartered in Springfield, Mo., has agreed to pay the United States to settle claims that it violated the False Claims Act, the Anti-Kickback Statute and the Stark Statute between 1996 and 2005, by entering into certain financial relationships with referring doctors at a local physician group and engaging in improper billing practices with respect to Medicare.